I’m really delighted to support this bill.

According to Grammarist, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”—according to the site, it’s a saying that means “that it is not enough to simply mean to do well; one must take action to do well. A good intention is meaningless unless it is followed by a good action.” That’s not my definition. That’s the definition of the site.

We are in a housing crisis, and talking about the crisis for years and years and years—because it didn’t happen yesterday. It has been happening for maybe the past 10 years, I would say. Nobody did anything about that. Nobody addressed that. So when the government takes bold action—yes, we need that bold action. That action is needed. According to that definition, yes, we need to take bold action. We need to do something about it, and we are doing that.

When we look into some of the changes that this bill does to accelerate building—we talk about removing the two-year time-out provisions for new official plans, secondary plans, zoning bylaws and minor variances entirely. This phase by itself is two years. When we did the hearing and we were talking about housing, according to the mayors’ association—the person who was doing the submission said that the cycle would take up to 11 years from the day the developer starts the process to apply to build something until that building sees the light. This one change can eliminate two years of that cycle. Just this one item of the bill can reduce two years of that process. We are hoping that we are going to get further than nine years—we are hoping to get shovels in the ground as soon as possible.

Talking about the needs of Ontarians—every year, around 500,000 new immigrants are coming. Even if I assume that only one third will come to Ontario—I assume that maybe more than 50% are coming to Ontario; the statistics are showing that—that’s more than 150,000 people, so even that target of 1.5 million in 10 years might not be enough to address the current and the future needs. When we do cross-planning, we need to make sure of this factor of growth. We are planning on this today. Maybe in two years the federal government will decide to get 600,000 or 700,000—we don’t know that yet, so even planning something on the current situation is the bare minimum.

I don’t know why the opposition will not be supporting something like that. They were opposition before, when the previous government was here—and neither did anything about that or even talked about that. So this is one item I would like to talk about.

The other item I would like to talk about is affordable housing, which is kind of the focus of the opposition. In every discussion around this group of bills to accelerate the housing or solve that crisis, they’re talking about affordable housing—every single time we raise anything, they talk about affordable housing.

When we talk about decreasing the DCs for not-for-profit organizations and for some specific purposes like rental buildings and special affordable housing—I’m not going to use the government narrative, that we know that it’s going to encourage more affordable housing; I will use the testimonies from the organizations who are doing that. For example, Simone Swail, manager of government relations at the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, said, “The commitment to waive development charges for all affordable housing developments will have a tangible and positive impact on the ability to develop new, affordable co-op homes in Ontario. We also look forward to engaging with the province in order to reduce the property tax burden on affordable housing providers, include co-ops.”

The VP of housing and homelessness at WoodGreen Community Services said, “This bill is a bold thrust to address the housing needs of the missing middle and innovative construction of supportive housing for the even more dire needs of the homeless population.” This is not our wording; this is the wording of the specialists, of the guys who are in this area, the guys who know their sector.

Jeff Neven, CEO of Indwell, said, “The proposed reduction in development costs and fees for affordable and non-profit housing will directly impact our costs, and make it easier to allocate resources where they are needed most.”

All those organizations are in the affordable and homeless areas, and their testimony is supportive for the bill—so I don’t know, again, where this is coming from.

If we talk about just housing which is affordable, the dream of young people to buy a house is getting further and further—more difficult. We know that lots of young people still live with their families because they can’t afford to buy a house.

Some of the statistics here show that the development charges for the average GTA single-family home in 2021 are about $116,900—$116,900 for a one-family unit. If we assume that this family house would be $1 million, this is more than 10% of the cost of the house—and it’s piggybacked. The developer is not going to pay that from his own pocket—it’s going to be added to mark it up on the price.

Condos—$100,000 of the price of a condo is a DC. So when we see this removed, that means a reduction in the price of the unit, making it more affordable.

Again, I understand that the opposition keep talking about, “What are the guarantees that developers will download that cost reduction to the end user or the cost of the unit?” I can’t guarantee that. Nobody can guarantee that. But it’s a step, and after that we can talk about the cost and the margins and everything else. But some steps have to be taken first; then we can assess the results and take further steps.

The final piece I would like to talk about is removing the third-party appeal amendment, removing some of the provisions in the bill that would have limited third-party appeals for official land and zoning bylaws.

We have two issues: as the minister said, NIMBY, the “not in my backyard” approach—so anybody can stop a project by going to the appeal process and saying, “I don’t like this building in my backyard or close to my house”—or BANANA, “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone,” so any developer would have to go to the middle of nowhere to be able to get no problems to build or otherwise every walk of life can walk in and file an appeal and the process will go for another year or so until that gets rectified in the courts or the appeal process. This is an extra cost in the project, because this project, which is on hold—the clock is ticking; the cost is going up. So whatever the developer sold the unit for, or was planning to sell the unit for—in two years, the cost is going to become more, and he will have to mark up for that cost.

The acceleration of housing is not only helping to address the crisis timing-wise, but also price-wise. We have to bring that down first.

I will close with a quote from the member from University–Rosedale, who said in the House that she urged the government to look at ways that we can fast-track “missing middle development so we can build two- and three-bedroom townhouses and laneway housing.” She is saying the current situation or current solutions we have do not meet the need.

We need to think out of the box. We need to take bold action. We need to take innovative ways to solve some of the issues, to be able to address the crisis.